[CPEO-MEF] Piketon - Ohio's Nuclear Legacy

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Piketon: A troubled past
Cold War factory created secret dump, set own rules

By Lynn Hulsey, Tom Beyerlein
Dayton Daily News (OH)
November 12, 2006

PIKETON - Inside the closely guarded confines of this 3,714-acre federal 
complex, deer lope along roadways, chubby groundhogs munch clover and 
wild turkeys gather during breeding season.

But this is no nature preserve.

Thousands of metal cylinders of corrosive radioactive waste - most 
weighing 14 tons and many heavily etched with rust - stretch across 
industrial yards.

Five plumes of poisoned groundwater lie beneath the surface, one of them 
so close to private land that traces of contamination were found in a 
monitoring well on a nearby farm.

Access is restricted inside three buildings that sprawl for more than a 
mile and are contaminated with radiation, beryllium, polychlorinated 
biphenyls (PCBs) and asbestos.

What dangers lie beneath the thick concrete floors of those buildings is 
anybody's guess.

Welcome to the old Piketon atomic plant 100 miles southeast of Dayton, 
once a proud monument to Ohio's nuclear legacy.

Today that legacy is one of mounting bills for U.S. taxpayers, an 
environmental cleanup that has no end in sight, and thousands of former 
workers or their survivors who sought compensation, claiming 
work-related cancers and other illnesses.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/index/news/special-reports/piketon/index.html

Note: This appears to be a thorough series, with numerous on-line links 
to background material.

--
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org


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